Friday, February 21, 2014

Arnolt Bristol

What do you get
when you take a Bristol 404, get a Italian design house Carrosserie Bertone,
who Stanley H. 'Wacky' Arnolt was an investor, and Italian designer Franco
Scaglione (who would pen the famous Alfa Romeo BAT concepts) to fashion the new
body and you get the Arnolt Bristol.

Stanley Arnolt
was an importer of European cars and based in Chicago and had previous form for
taking some of these and having a bespoke bodies built for them in
collaboration with Bertone, such as the MG TD and Aston DB2both of which sold
in small numbers. The Bristol though was to be different, from the start he had
negotiated to buy 200 Bristol 404 chassis and 1971 cc, six-cylinder 130 hp
engines. The tall engine resulted in the bonnet air scoop being needed.

This car though
had eyes on competition racing finishing well first, second and fourth at the
1955 Sebring 12 hour race and followed that up in 1956 with a second and third.
So it was no surprise that the car was offered in four option levels,
Competition (stripped out full on racer spec), Bolide (not a stripped out but
non the less a racer), Delux (came with luxuries such as side windows and
convertible roof, instrument binnacle and glve box) and finally Coupe (with pop
up lights).

In total from
1953 until 1959 a 142 cars were sold of which only one was right hand drive and
two had all aluminium bodies. Also one never received a body and was used to
showcase the chassis and drive train at auto shows. The Wikipedia page link at
the bottom goes into much more detail and I recommend you take a look.The Bristol 404-